Desktop publishing software applications are used to create documents with graphical layouts and typographic quality text and images, such as books, magazines, newspapers, posters, flyers and brochures. Some desktop publishing applications provide tools that designers can use to select and apply colors to the documents. Such tools include eyedropper tools, color selection tools or color sampling tools that are generally implemented in a graphical user interface. Using one of these tools, a designer can move an input device, such as a mouse, over the pixels in the display that correspond to the color the designer wishes to sample. The sampled color may then be selected from a color picker or other user interface control and applied to the desired regions of the document. However, existing color selection tools have several limitations. One limitation is that such tools require the designer to manually select a pixel from which to sample a color of interest, which adds at least one step in the designer's workflow for each color sampled. Furthermore, in the case where an undesired color is sampled, the designer must either sample another pixel or adjust the values of the sampled color to achieve the desired color. Accordingly, there is a need for an improved color selection technique.